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Smalltalk – not just for big players

February 14, 2009

Remember your early days when you were a kid and how you loved playing with your toys. Imagine programming so joyful you’d want to do it a little bit longer even if your dinner is getting cold and somebody is not too happy about it. Imagine having fun while refactoring code. Where can you get this nowadays? And you can get it for free.

I admit it. I’m newish here and I’ve been playing with Smalltalk for only about few months. This explains the excitement and I’ve never been so excited about programming. In the last two to three weeks I’ve had lots of those “a-ha” moments where suddenly all make sense. And just after I thought I understand some parts of it quite thoroughly, I get introduced to even leaner and simpler way of doing it.

Coding and code refactoring is actually fun with Smalltalk. It’s like having this big new toy where all the things I’ve learned so far get turned upside down. No more SQL, no more server and application restarts, no more multi-tier setups. Built-in persistence, instant state reflection, hot code deployment and unified language and tools are just some of advantages Smalltalk has to offer.

Yeah, it’s a real eye opener. I’m finding more and more information about Smalltalk and I can’t understand why it’s so rarely used. Clearly, it has some drawbacks, but considering all the advantages it has to offer and with all available information, I’d expect it should be used more. Maybe, like Lisp, Smalltalk’s curse is it’s ability to morph into what one wants. Looks like people get confused when there’s little or no language restrictions to work by. Or maybe, Smalltalk is just to different (or simple) and takes too much of a mind-bending to get comfortable with.